Director’s Message

We’re back from our tour of Europe, and looking forward to welcoming you all back to campus in October for our Centennial reunion.

Europe was a wonderful journey—great weather, beautiful cities both familiar and new (Ljubljana, Slovenia was an unexpected gem.) Our heartfelt thanks go out again to Fr. Michael Driscoll, who once again joined us a chaplain and incomparable cultural guide. We had some marvelous churches as concert venues, but we have to work harder next time to fill them for our concerts—we get a little lazy about that sometimes, taking for granted the tremendous support we’re accustomed to receiving on tour in the US (and that we’ve generally gotten on previous tours as well, particularly in Spain in 2013.)

A personal highlight for me was welcoming my daughter Claire to the trip when she arrived in Munich (her first experience of flying alone.) She proved to be a great traveling companion. I think about the way she’s grown up with the group on these tours; I remember Chip Stam saying the same thing about his kids. It fills me with joy, but I also reflect wistfully on the evanescence of youth. In addition to the professional satisfaction and the hours, perhaps the greatest joy of working in the academy is the continual flow of brilliant and talented young people through one’s life. We recapture our own youth through them (hopefully in a constructive way…)

And you can do so as well this October when you return to Notre Dame for our reunion. Pat Scott and Brian McLinden have done yeoman’s labor in organizing the event, and Rudy Reyes and Stephen Smith (Our Men in Development) have been tremendously generous with their time and expertise. It’s going to be an unforgettable experience, and we hope you’ll share in it.